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Causes     Details     Lessons Learnt    
Lessons Drawn from the Flowerhorn Craze

The Flowerhorn Craze is a classic event that all Singaporeans will continue to remember in the times to come. So, after the ironic event, what lessons can we and have we drawn from it?

Belief in superstitions

This would apply to older folks and people who bought the Flowerhorn and really believed that it would bring them good luck and prosperity at one point in time. Most of the people who bought the fish for this reasons found out in the end that the good luck the aquarium store owners promised the fish would bring them was not true. Singaporeans have thus learnt not to believe supernatural faiths or other non-scientifically proven things so easily.

"Follow the Crowd" mentality

Many of the people who bought the Flowerhorn fish just because their relative did too were in the end left with a fish that had a big appetite, causing its owners to have to burn a deep hole in their pockets every week just spending money on food for the fish, as well as the time-consumption of the fish and its requirement for frequent cleaning, water changing etc. The soft-hearted Singaporeans ended up having to support their pet till it out-lived its life span, for they could not find that unfeeling place in their hearts to flush the Flowerhorn down the toilet bowl. We can thus find out from this incident that there is little point in following what others do, we should have our own sense of judgment and set of principles when making a decision.

Thinking before action

A lot of people who bought the fish also did it rashly, for at that point in time, they passed by an aquarium shop, and their children cried and pleaded for them to purchase a Flowerhorn, and they therefore did so just to please their children during that short moment, resulting in having to spend away a large sum of money, and in exchange, gaining the burden of sustaining a live animal in their homes. If they had thought rationally before their actions, they would have known that buying a fish that once lived in the drains for a few thousand dollars was far from worth it. This therefore teaches us that before doing something, we should carefully weigh the pros and cons, and see which outweighs the other before making a decision.

Fish rearing competitions

Some interesting events that were held during the craze were the many Flowerhorn breeding competitions, where breeders take their best prized fish and compete with other breeders for a trophy and prize. There were also many exhibitions in various shopping malls of the Flowerhorn candidates of the competition. Flowerhorn rearing became like a sport during that time.

End of the craze, late 2003

The craze finally ended in the later part of 2003, as with the emergence of many aquarium shops, the production rate soon exceeded the demand for the fish, and the price of the fish began to drop. Almost everyone had already owned a Flowerhorn in their homes, and therefore fewer people began to source for these fish in aquarium shops. Also, people began to see the irony of the whole situation, and decided that it was pointless in continuing to go after this trend. The demand for the fish dropped sharply together with the price of the fish, and now, even the Qian Hu Fish Farm, the biggest aquarium store in Singapore, which was once filled with many varieties of Flowerhorn, is now selling only one or two.

The concept of Feng Shui is estimated to be more than 3000 years old.